I blushed. “Oh.”
“Yes. You don’t seem to have a lot of faith in your police department,” he said pointedly, a flicker of a smile playing on his lips.
“It’s not that. I just-”
“You just think you can solve it before we can,” Xander answered for me, and while I wanted to argue, I couldn’t, really. I expected a lecture any moment now.
“And I would be remiss to not consider you a valuable resource at this point. Sure, it’s unconventional, and definitely a break from protocol. But I’ve learned by now that there’s no point in telling you to back off. You won’t. Even at your own peril, you keep guessing and following leads like it’s your job. I don’t know how you find the time.”
“I don’t have a lot of hobbies,” I murmured, my cheeks burning.
Xander laughed, and to my surprise I began to feel all warm and tingly all over.
“I probably could have guessed that,” he said.
“I’m sorry for doubting you,” I said earnestly. “I shouldn’t have just assumed Elisa knew the truth. But don’t you think it’s kind of unfair to lie to the public about what’s going on?”
“I struggle with that decision from time to time,” Xander said, looking serious. “I certainly don’t take any pleasure in being deceptive. But sometimes, it’s for the best. Can you trust my word on that?”
I nodded. “I suppose so.”
“Anyway, if you’re going to interview Miss Gersemmi, at least be nice? Maybe be a little nicer to her than you are to me,” he suggested with a wink that made my heart do a backflip.
I smiled weakly. “Sure. Of course. But you’re really not going to tell me to back off?”
He shrugged. “No point in trying to keep you out of the loop. You’re all tangled up in the loop already. Might as well just try to limit the damage.”
“Oh. Well, thank you,” I said awkwardly, surprised at how chilled out he was about this.
“And Arti? If you find out anything interesting, let me know, okay? If we’re going to be working parallel leads, we might as well work together,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder.
“You got it,” I told him as he walked away. I turned to watch him leave, unable to keep my eyes from checking out his butt as he left. I shook my head.
“Get a grip,” I muttered to myself. After all, I had a sculptor to interview.
Chapter 8
To be totally honest, I was feeling pretty smug by the time I approached Bridget’s house. After the conversation with Xander, plus a little time on my broomstick to give me nothing but my own thoughts to keep me company, I was envisioning heaping spoonfuls of validation pouring in from the police.
Bridget Garmessi was one of the young women who made up the town’s fledgling artistic community. She liked her privacy. I could respect that, but if you weren’t local, chances were that you would have a very hard time coming across her little cottage.
Large hedges rose up, blocking the entire cottage from view, with the only article on display being the rather large, silver and copper-colored modern art statue on the front lawn.
I walked through the hedges and gently down the winding little path to the home, which was certainly something to behold. Like most artists’ homes, it was something between a studio workshop and a living space, and Bridget’s was a fusion of the two in the purest sense. The house itself might have looked like a regular, snug, cozy witch cottage not too dissimilar from my parents’, if it weren’t for the fact that someone – I wondered if it was Bridget herself - had given the place what could politely be called an avant-garde paint job. It looked like someone had botched a Keith Haring imitation mixed with some kind of surrealist experiment.
It explained the hedges hiding the place from sight, at least.
Bridget, though, was a sculptor, and her workshop jutted off the side of the cottage as something that would have looked like an open-air garage to human eyes. It was positively filled with big hunks of rock in various states of being formed into gorgeous statues.
And those statues and busts kind of spilled out into the yard, some just shoved on the outside of the workshop under an awning while others loomed in the yard like guardians. And from what I had heard of Bridget, that might very well have been the case.
The sound of stone being carved reached my ears before I even saw Bridget.
As I approached the house, a bust of a young woman that stood near the entrance to the garage turned her head and shouted, “A visitor!”
I nearly had a heart attack.
“Yes, yes, Portia, thank you,” came a voice from the workshop, but the sound of carving didn’t stop.
I tilted my head at ‘Portia’ as I walked closer. Exactly like before, she turned her head and shouted “A visitor!” in the exact same tone again.
“OKAY, Portia, thank you!” Bridget called again, finally marching around the entrance to the garage. With a quick point of the finger to Portia’s head and a quickly muttered spell, the statue went silent and still with a smug smirk on her face.
Bridget shook her head, giving me a weary look. “I swear, a human alarm system would be better, I need to just install some trip wires. They’d be less annoying.”
“Believe me, I’ve seen worse,” I said with an uneasy smile.
Despite the bold, artsy exterior of the place, Bridget didn’t exactly fit the cosmopolitan look I expected from her. She had frizzy black hair tied back, with protective worker’s goggles over her face. She wore a simple gray hoodie, jeans, and work boots, and her hands looked tough and dry. A smattering of freckles dotted her face, which was finished off with some of the most intense eyes I’d ever seen.
And those intense eyes were currently studying me suspiciously. “I wasn’t expecting anyone today. Are you lost?”
“Um, no,” I said, taken off-guard and suddenly struggling to find the words that weren’t going to get the cops called on me straight away. “I was just-”
“Hold that thought, if you’re not in a hurry,” Bridget interrupted, heading back to the workshop and gesturing for me to follow. I found myself obeying without a second thought. “I’m in the middle of something.”
Around the wooden wall, I got a full view of the workshop. The walls were covered in shelves lined various pieces of sculpting equipment, chemicals, and of course, works-in-progress and what looked like sculpted heads in various states.
Bridget was obviously at home here. This was her space.
In the center of the room stood what seemed to be her current subject: a massive slab of marble, the top half of which was in a rough state of half-completion. From the waist down, it was just a block of stone.
I initially thought it was a simple carving of a woman, until I noticed the odd shapes that made up her hair. They were thick, tendril-like, extending out in twisting, wild directions, and something about the statue’s eyes were sharper than I’d expect - they were the first thing my own eyes were drawn to.
“Medusa?” I asked, tilting my head to the side as Bridget made her way around the statue, squinting at the snake hair with a frown.
“Eventually. I’m still working out some of the kinks. Do me a favor and stand in front of her. A little to her right, actually.”
“What am I volunteering for?” I asked with a smile as I obeyed Bridget’s instructions. I hoped I wasn’t about to be turned to stone.
“It’s going to be an interactive art exhibit,” she explained, brushing a curl out of her eyes and tucking it back into the mass of her hair. “What, do you think I’m going to turn you to stone? I only do that to the teenagers who try to come smash up the statues.”
I gave a nervous laugh in response.
“Lapis animoroa,” she pronounced dramatically, flourishing her index finger at the statue. A beam of white light arced between the finger’s tip and the statue itself, and slowly, as if it was a living thing waking up, the statue started to move its partly-formed torso.
The marble face and its hars
h expression turned to me, those beautifully detailed eyes glaring directly at me, and I watched the hands flex as the rest of the body tried to turn toward me. Part of her torso did twist to face me, but one of the shoulders seemed very stiff, like the enchantment wasn’t totally working on it yet, and her hair was stationary.
Bridget gave an irritated huff from behind the statue. “The hair is supposed to move,” she complained, hands on her hips as she tapped her foot impatiently. “Take a few steps to the left now?”
I moved slowly, and Medusa’s eyes followed me perfectly, but she seemed to get a little confused and tried to move her body in the opposite direction. Bridget rolled her eyes.
“We covered this,” she told the statue, walking around to face it and pat it on the cheek. “Body moves with eyes, remember?”
Medusa opened her mouth and hissed, and I definitely flinched, but Bridget just looked at the sculpture in the same way I looked at Luna when she was acting up.
“Right, to be fair, that one’s my fault,” she remarked. “I haven’t given the snakes mouths yet, so the hissing enchantment doesn’t have anywhere else to come out.”
“Oh yeah, totally, I can relate,” I said with a blank expression, peering between the two, trying to convince myself I wasn’t nearly as freaked out as I really was right now.
Bridget pulled out a stool and stood up on it behind Medusa, peering into her hair. Her expression brightened up as she saw a single little stone snake wiggling awkwardly in there.
“Ok, just stand still right there, I need to figure out why this little guy is working,” she said, holding a hand out to me and getting her tools to start inspecting her sculpture.
“Okay then,” I said, watching Medusa glaring at me and I assumed trying very hard to turn me into stone. “So, I wanted to come over to ask you about something.”
“I figured you did,” she said, not looking up at me. “But I don’t see a camera or pen and paper or a badge, so I can’t imagine you’re the press or a cop, which means you’re not here to ask about the murder.”
I opened and closed my mouth a few times silently. “Well, uh, honestly? I’m none of those things, but that is exactly what I came to talk about.”
She paused and looked up at me, giving me the once-over with a penetrating gaze. “So what, you’re just an amateur running around asking people about a murder victim outside the law?”
“Basically, yeah.”
“I can dig that,” she said, nodding and going back to her work. “And you’re being cool about posing for me, so sure, ask away.”
That was easier than I had expected. Sort of.
“And before you ask, no, I didn’t do it.”
“Do you get accused of murder a lot?” I asked.
She gestured around the workshop. “Spend all day in a shady cottage sculpting living statues of monsters and busts that yell at people, and you don’t exactly come across as a member of the neighborhood watch.”
I had to admit, I liked Bridget.
So, I hear you were good friends with Arianna, is that right?”
“Yeah,” she said curtly.
“I’m sorry for your loss, then. You’ve known each other a long time?” I pried, fishing for more.
“Yep,” she said just as curtly. I paused, biting my lip.
“Care to elaborate?” I ventured, rocking back and forth on my heels. “No offense, but you sound kind of unfazed by all this.”
Bridget raised her head to glare at me, and this time, I noticed a thin ring of glistening tears around her eyelids, despite her hardened face.
“Look, we’ve all got our own ways we mourn, alright?” she said. “Some people bawl their eyes out for days and empty a few pints of ice cream. Me, I get out my tools and get to work.”
I felt my heart wrench in my chest, and I had to swallow back a swelling lump in my throat and nod.
“Right, sorry.”
Bridget went back to work. “Yeah, we were friends. Arianna was one of the first people to believe in me when I first started all this stuff. We go way back.”
“Did you know her brother at all?” I asked.
“Jackson? Sure, I guess,” she said with a light shrug. “Why?”
“I heard that Arianna had been on the phone with him the night before she died,” I said as Medusa grimaced at me, trying to make the scariest face possible. I gave her my best unnerved look in response, and the statue seemed proud of itself, crossing its arms smugly.
“They talk to each other a lot,” Bridget said.
“But this was an argument,” I said. “Apparently, it was heated. Any idea what they might have been upset at each other about?”
Bridget stopped and put her hands on her hips, staring at the ground and thinking for a moment. She then looked straight at me and asked, “Think he did it, huh?”
“I didn’t say that,” I said quickly.
“No, but your questions sound like it,” she said, going back to her work.
“Well, I’m following a lead,” I said. “Anything you know could help.”
“Jackson’s hot headed sometimes,” she said. “Especially after the big falling out with Vince.”
That got my interest. “Vince?”
Bridget rolled her eyes. “He’s another artist in town, but more to the point, he was Arianna’s ex.”
Now she had my attention. “Ex? What happened?”
Bridget huffed impatiently and stopped working to gesticulate as she spoke. “Right, so the full story is that Arianna and Vince were seeing each other for a few months. They were talking about moving in with each other for a while, but it kinda went cold. Vince didn’t like that, because Arianna was kind of…” she rolled her hand in a circle as she searched for the word. “I don’t want to say his muse, but that’s what it was. Vince was head over heels for her.”
“And she broke it off?” I asked, crossing my arms.
“No,” Bridget said, wagging a finger. “Vince broke it off with her over an angry, drunken phone call, because he had just found out that she was cheating on him.”
My eyes widened. “That is the first I’ve heard of that.”
“They weren’t exactly publicizing it,” Bridget said with a sigh. “I don’t know why Arianna liked men so much, but apparently, just one wasn’t enough for her. They weren’t really a good match, I told her that myself, but instead of breaking things off, she just stuck to the guy and fooled around. I don’t know who it was with. He could have just come across a dating app in her messages, I don’t know.”
I nodded, my mind racing. That opened up a lot of new possibilities, which was both good and bad for me.
“Okay, but what does that have to do with Jackson?”
“Jackson and Vince are old friends,” she said. “You know as well as I do, in a small town, people stick together for life. Jackson was probably upset that she made things complicated between him and Vince. I mean, I don’t have to tell you it’s awkward to hang out with the brother of the ex that cheated on you, you know?”
I nodded, frowning. “I see. I don’t suppose he’d mind me dropping in to talk to him, do you?”
“I’m not his mom, I don’t know,” she snorted, but she got down from her ladder and walked over to a desk, pulling open a drawer and rummaging through it. She pulled out a card and handed it to me. The name Vince Bryan was embossed on the front, along with an address and phone number.
“Pay him a visit,” she said. “Tell him I sent you if he asks.”
“Will do, thanks,” I said with a nod. I looked at Medusa, who was now checking her stone nails. “Need any help with her?”
“Nah, I’d have to pay you for anything else, and you’ve been a good sport,” she said with the first grin I’d seen from her. She gave me one more once-over, then spoke again. “If you’re ever interested in modeling, I could use someone a little on the tall side.”
I blushed a little and laughed nervously. “I’m pretty busy, but I’ll keep it mind! Thanks, Bridg
et.”
“Take it easy,” she said, waving me off as I headed out of the garage. “And good luck,” she added, in a voice so low I almost didn’t hear.
“A visitor!” Portia cried next to me, making me jump about a foot, and I shook my head as I got my broom and walked back up the path to the road.
Another artist. Today was turning out to be quite a tour of the town’s cultural side, and I couldn’t say it was what I had expected to be doing when I woke up that morning.
My phone buzzed as I got to the road, and I saw Mom’s number on it.
“Hello?” I answered as I mounted my broom. “What’s up, Mom?”
“Hi honey!” she said brightly. “I’m sure you’re busy, I just wanted to check and see if some stuff had arrived in my name for the work on the B&B?”
“Some... stuff?” I asked, suddenly suspicious. “What kind of stuff?”
“Oh, I guess that’s a no, then. Nothing special, just keep an eye out, okay?”
“Um, ok.”
Before I could ask more Mom’s voice chirped, “Okay, I’ve gotta go, be safe, Arti!”
The phone clicked, and I stared down at it for a moment before rolling my eyes and heading toward Vince’s place.
Whatever Mom was having shipped in for the renovations, I didn’t have a great feeling about it. Mom being evasive was never a good sign. Maybe dealing with artists all afternoon would be a nice distraction after all.
Chapter 9
I was not looking forward to this at all.
The idea of going to Arianna’s ex-boyfriend’s place to ask him questions about her murder was not a pleasant one. Sure, they were broken up, but I wasn’t sure he was totally over her. And from the way Bridget had said his name, I had an inkling I was not going to like Vince Bryant very much.
“You know, you don’t have to do this,” I murmured to myself as I zoomed out of Bridget’s neighborhood on my broom. “You’re not a cop. You’re not a detective. You are under no obligation to interview Vince Bryant or do anything else except wait patiently for the police to solve this thing like everyone else.”
Thank my Lucky Spells: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Moonlight Cove Mystery Book 3) Page 6